Since Wget 1.10 also prints sizes in kilobytes/megabytes/etc., I am thinking of removing the thousand separators from size display. The reasons are:
* The separators need to be manually removed when the numbers are pasted into any software that deals with numbers, such as "bc". This problem was outweighed by their usefulness for gauging orders of magnitude, but now that we also print sizes in human-readable units, this advantage comes in question. * The separators are interpunction which introduces clutter, especially with complex size output also containing the "remaining" size next to the whole size. * There is pressure to replace the "," character with the character mandated by the locale (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/8avkf). I've been reluctant to do so because of my belief that basic properties of Unix program's output, such as the display of numbers, should be, if possible, unaffected by locale. * I was surprised to learn (http://tinyurl.com/dlxtl) that some cultures use "myriad separators" (which group together four digits) rather than thousand separators. Of course, it is trivial to make the grouping configurable, but the code would need to look at obscure locale settings which, given the above, seems like more trouble than it's worth. What do you think?
